View full size'The Steal: A Cultural History of Shoplifting' by Rachel Shteir

They’re beautiful, famous and appear to have it all. They’re also shoplifters.

And they fascinate us. Why would they do it?

Rachel Shteir, author of an exhaustive new study on one of the world’s most under-appreciated crimes, doesn’t have an easy answer. Her book, “The Steal: A Cultural History of Shoplifting,” (Penguin Press, $25.95) provides a fascinating look at the impulse to snatch something from a store shelf and shove it into your pocket or purse.

She explores the compulsions, addictions, the self-justifications and the simple, pure thrill of it all.

But she doesn’t give us a nice, packaged answer as to why people steal.

I asked Shteir — if after so much research, interviewing hundreds of shoplifters and exploring the crime from its historical beginnings to the growth of modern day, anti-theft efforts — was she frustrated that she couldn’t wrap it all up with one general conclusion.

Her short answer: “No.”

Her long answer: “It’s cultural, possibly neurological. That’s what fascinates me. It’s a topic that’s so tenacious. If you go back to mythological times, you see stealing and commerce are closely related. Hermes is the god of commerce and theft. In our world, we separate the two.” It’s been seen as a crime, a disease and a protest.

Shoplifting seems like a trivial thing, something that celebrities do for a lark, teens do when they’re bored, children do when they don’t know better and angry people do when they want to get back at a merchant.

It’s surprisingly pervasive and costly, hitting the pocketbooks of every consumer. One study estimates that 27 million Americans shoplift — a stunning 9 percent of the population — and Shteir says that number may actually be even higher. “Store security catches a person shoplifting one in 48 times and informs the police of the incident one in 50 times,” she writes in the book.

All that stealing hits home, even for those who never would dream of taking something without paying for it. It trickles down in the form of a “crime tax,” equalling about $450 for the amount stores raise prices to cover loss from theft.

Shoplifting as a cultural phenomenon first caught Shteir’s attention when Ryder was arrested for stealing $5,500 worth of designer clothing and accessories from a Saks Fifth Avenue store in Beverly Hills. Shteir’s book opens with a minute-by-minute video-surveillance camera view of Ryder’s 2001 trip through the various Saks departments, snatching socks and hats and hair bands.

Ryder in 2003 was sentenced to three years’ probation, $3,700 in fines and $6,355 in restitution to Saks. The case became a media sensation, and, counter intuitively, raised Ryder’s fashion profile. Designer Marc Jacobs even hired her to pose in ads for his spring collection.

“The Festival Market Mall in Pompano Beach, Fla., used the final minutes of the Saks surveillance video, when Ryder exits the store, along with the song ‘The Best Things in Life Are Free’ in its ads,” Shteir writes. “‘Winona Knows. Why Pay Retail?’” the caption reads.”

Celebrities by far aren’t the only ones driven to shoplift. Sticky-fingered perpetrators are found in every demographic: rich, poor, old, young, as well as from every race and social strata.

“We have this preconceived idea that there’s a certain kind of person who shoplifts, and that’s just not true,” Shteir said. “If you’re going to talk about the typical shoplifter at all, the person who probably is shoplifting the most is a white man who makes $70,000 a year.

“If you go back to the history of shoplifting, it was considered a women’s crime,” she said. “Women were traditionally the shoppers, so it made sense that they were the shoplifters, but that’s no longer the case.”

Social scientists point to everything from the disintegration of “traditional families” to the “American love of shopping,” as drivers for the crime.

For some, stealing was a way to transform themselves, an unconscious idea that possessing something new, something coveted, would make them happier. Others stole because they felt justified, that they deserved it.

“The thing that struck me over and over again is the complexity of (shoplifters’) stories, how often they would start out by saying they didn’t know why they did it, but then, after you talk to them for a while, you’d hear these stories about deprivation, though not just financial deprivation.

“It might be that they’ve been caretakers for their sick mothers, or their spouse divorced them and left them penniless. In some way, shoplifting was a compensatory act. It would redress the unjustices done to them. I heard that story a lot.”

While researching the book, Shteir spent time examining the looting that happened in New Orleans in the wake of the levee failures from Hurricane Katrina. She became fascinated by the varying reactions to the crime.

“It was seen as OK to steal a loaf of bread. We would give that person a pass,” she said. “But when someone steals a flat-screen television, that’s not OK, and we consider it heinous.

“Except in a situation like Katrina, it’s rare that you hear about people today shoplifting basic necessities,” she said.

Gillette razors, lingerie and batteries make it onto a British top-10 list of the most shoplifted “hot products.”

“Shoplifting is pervasive,” Shteir said. “People really like to do it. The thrill of the steal is not something you should underestimate.”